Re: [boost] [locale] Review results for Boost.Locale library

Subject: Re: [boost] [locale] Review results for Boost.Locale library
From: Artyom (artyomtnk_at_[hidden])
Date: 2011-04-27 11:01:40

> From: Steve Bush <sb2_at_[hidden]>
> 
> > Before you continue this "Crusade" against Boost.Locale,
> 
> 
> 
> My  view of this affair is as follows:
> 
> Artyom advocates universal  use of UTF-8 – see:
> 
> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1049947/should-utf-16-be-considered-harmful
> 
> 
> 
> I believe this will be deeply unpopular with Asian programmers who, for  
>whatever reasons, hate UTF-8 and love UTF-16.
> 
> 

That does not mean that the library does not fully supports wide/utf-16 strings.

And it does a lots of effort to support it.

> 
> Artyom has also  said that MSVC is "broken" and (as I understand it)
> that all programmers should  use ASCII for locale's gettext translate.
>

I've mentioned not once that ASCII keys not a technical reason
but much deeper - localization related reason.

I can technically add support of L"" and Whatever You Want as gettext keys
but this is wrong same as it is wrong today to use "gets()" and the
real reason is not technical and not even the fact that MSVC
does not know to create proper UTF-8 literal, the reason
is much deeper - linguistic reason, usability reason, even
for pure Windows developers.

I had written this reason not once and I will not repeat
it over and over again.
 
> 
> 
> However, just because  boost is a portable library
> and boost locale is used for localisation doesn’t
> mean that programmers are writing *portable applications*.
> In other words,  people may well wish to USE boost locale
> in UTF-16 environment eg Windows and  have nothing
> to do with UTF-8 or ASCII.
> 
>

If I was developing this library for "portable applications"
only I would not provide actually wide character support
at all as it is very unportable.

But I did a huge effort (that BTW I didn't need originally)
to support Windows development style.

 
> 
> As I understand it,  those people are not well supported by the gettext bit of 
>locale.
> 

gettext catalogs has nothing to do with actual strings encoding
that can be used (for both ids and outputs). As I mentioned in other
mail I've send.

Bottom line...

Sometimes design decisions should be made to make software
better even that not all potential users like it or
understand the rationale behind right now.

Best,
  Artyom